“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces enduring submission, and enduring submission produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s agape has been distributed into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.”
Romans 5:3-5
Shed abroad, poured out, distributed by Holy Spirit: passion. The discussion of enduring submission that produces the character that produces hope leads to Holy Spirit’s distribution of God’s passion.
Hope says, “There is no way what I anticipate isn’t going to happen.” So, I maintain shared passion because I know what I love is stable. Character produces hope because enduring submission produces character.
Character means I never quit on what I know is inevitable. The rock bottom of my heart anticipates something constant in my life that I feed with my highest. Value follows shared passion.
Ministry is Exhausting
Ministry is supposed to be exhausting. We end up empty, so God fills us, not ourselves. When we are full of ourselves, love is meager at best. When we are full of God’s passion, we burn.
War is exhausting. When a soldier becomes consumed by overcoming the enemy, he loses sight of why he is fighting in the first place. Passion for war comes from the outcome victory provides. I do not war because I love killing enemies; I war to produce God’s purpose in my wife, family, and kingdom assignment.
We war, and we win! We would war even if there were no hope of winning this war because we know the inevitable victory of Christ. Without the trusting faith, we have that Christ ultimately overcomes because He already won, we would be shadow boxing or investing in futility.
Character maintains conflict because of enduring submission to the hope, the inevitable reality of Christ inheriting All.
Passion Shed Abroad
Love is received and distributed by the relationships of our lives. Holy Spirit distributes God’s agape because of the certainty of God’s purposes.
Now, let’s apply that to the people of our assignments: we always operate with a sense of the ultimate God is doing in them. We work in the blueprint and battle plan of inevitable victory in that person’s life.
That means a fathering leader never looks at the present condition but the future completion. I look you in the eyes, see your soul as Father sees it–your eternal identity from Christ–and I respond to that inevitability as if nothing can stop it.
Jesus always responds to us on this basis, and this is the sense of truthing agape that the mature can receive. This shared passion with Father is the position of authority the matured ekklesia manifests. Christ sees us from Father’s blueprinted eternal identity, and Christ installs the finished work.
“Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed–when I present or even a lot more when I am absent with fear and trembling–work at your rescue until it reaches fullness; for it is God operating in you both to will and to accomplish what He intends.”
Philippians 2:12-13
God does not enjoy unfinished projects. Therefore, Christ never stops working until what Father wants becomes all Father desired it to be.
The master painter returns to the process again and again. Day after day, he communicates on the canvas what he sees in his heart, and only when that communication entirely says what he passionately desired does he say, “It is finished.”
The painter’s passion portrays his passion, and only by entering into that passion can you interpret the painting.
If you wish to accomplish things through other people, they need more than vision. They need your passion for the vision.
David Invests Passion
David was a man who had God’s passion, and David shared that passion with the mighty men who followed him. They had his vision, but that operated in God’s passion shared in their relationship with David as a leader.
Saul never had God’s passion, just his own. His motivational style was abusive. He used people, emptied their best into his passion, left them empty. As a result, they feared Saul, not God.
David invested God’s passion into rejected people. His motivational style was redemptive. He led people by filling them up and leading them into battle to burn with the same passion. David’s mighty men feared God because David feared God. They followed David because of honor, not dread.
Look Into My Eyes
Fathers can look into your eyes and see what is in your heart. Fathers can speak what in their hearts to your heart. Fathers can build you up with shared passion for purpose since purpose is the reason you follow a father in the first place.
When Dutch Sheets came here, he spoke from a father’s heart to Ruthanne and me. Those words set us on course for greater realization of ultimate purpose.
I can speak fathering words into your heart that invest Father’s passion into you as a motivational factor for your living. You can work them out in your words and behavior with redemptive and restorational effect because they are Father’s passion more than mine.
Some of my passion for you is in them and should be because that reveals the sincerity of my passion for you. So I am not speaking with no personally invested love when I speak Father’s love.
These words build.
Fathering Prophecy
The uniqueness of fathering prophecy comes from an adjustment in the intention of the prophetic communication. Who prophesies is part of it, but why that leader prophesies is more of it.
For example, when you labor as a prophet or apostle with the ultimate of building up your ministry or revealing your anointing, you cannot express a fully submitted heart. You are prophesying with something of your own purpose blended in–“I want you to recognize that I can hear or see and communicate as a functional prophet”–and your need to have that identity clouds the atmosphere of the souls involved.
When dead apostle walking prophesies as a father into someone following his leadership, he communicates from shared passion, you receive with shared passion. The end product is about your ultimate identity from Christ that leads to Father’s initial intentions for your existence.
